Good morning! Happy 38th Birthday to Me 🎉 ! I honestly don’t care, I think birthdays are stupid and egotistical. 🎂 I am not gawd. Maybe I’ll celebrate my birthday of retirement, but even then I don’t care. Maybe I should be celebrating it more, I survived 2020, the year best described by a Phil Ochs lyrics in the Crucifixion, “It’s good to be alive when the eulogies are read.” It’s actually remarkable to think how many people I’ve known that over years died over the past year from the COVID. ⚰ God bless them. Doing a heck of a lot better then them, although I am feeling awful from allergies this morning. 😃 More antihistamine please. 👃

Kind of a chilly one, although the wind hasn’t been as strong as it was earlier. Clear and 4 degrees in Delmar, NY. Breezy, ️17 mph breeze from the northwest 🌬 . The current wind chill is -18. There are 5 inches of snow on the ground. ☃  I still want to be brave and try to go for my morning walk, but only time will tell.️

Last night I felt terribly itchy and congested. 🤢 I think it is just allergies but I retired to bed early last night. This morning, after the walk I plan to take a shower before sitting down to work. I think while I was working on malfunctioning vacuum yesterday, it was blowing around a lot of dust and mold which triggered my allergies, making me absolutely miserable. 👃 The heat is kind of an all or nothing deal in my apartment.  ♨ At least my apartment is warm this morning, but I’m hopeful that soon I’ll be able to have the windows open or at least get out more and get more fresh air. Today though that will be tough. 🌬

Today will be mostly sunny 🌞, with a high of 14 degrees at 2pm. 17 degrees below normal. But it can be even colderMaximum wind chill around -18 at 6am; Blustery, with a northwest wind 17 to 21 mph, with gusts as high as 36 mph. A year ago, we had partly cloudy skies in the morning with sunny skies in the afternoon. The high last year was 35 degrees. The record high of 54 was set in 2002. 8.3 inches of snow fell back in 1990.❄

I had some stuff come up yesterday, and it was cold, 🌨 so I ended up not going to store at lunchtime.  Today I do plan to go to the store and maybe thereafter for a while at the library, but not long as it will be cold. It’s going to be tricky though if I want to go at lunchtime, because I have a 1 PM meeting. Maybe I’ll just take lunch after the meeting, in case I’m running a bit late from the store. Plus at 1 PM the stores are always so crowded. 👥 I also need to drop off my stimulus check at the bank, as that’s been burning a hole in my pocket for some time now, and it would be nice to earn all 5 cents of interest and at some point I’ll loose the check. 💵 I am sure the bank will still be a zoo 🐘 as the inside teller is closed, so everybody will be trying to transact their business outside, and it will be difficult for my truck to make the turn.

Solar noon 🌞 is at 12:09 pm with sun having an altitude of 29.6° from the due south horizon (-41.3° vs. 6/21). A six foot person will cast a 10.6 foot shadow today compared to 2.2 feet on the first day of summer. The golden hour 🏅 starts at 4:24 pm with the sun in the west-southwest (239°). 📸 The sunset is in the west-southwest (246°) with the sun dropping below the horizon at 5:05 pm after setting for 3 minutes and 10 seconds with dusk around 5:35 pm, which is one minute and 18 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 The best time to look at the stars is after 6:09 pm. At sunset, look for partly clear skies 🌄 and temperatures around 12 degrees. The wind chill around sunset will be -5. ☃️ Breezy, 17 mph breeze ⛅ from the northwest with gusts up to 28mph. Tomorrow will have 9 hours and 55 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 18 seconds over today.

Tonight will be mostly clear 🌃, with a low of 0 degrees at 6am. 15 degrees below normal. Maximum wind chill around -13 at 5am; Northwest wind 8 to 15 mph. In 2020, we had clear skies in the evening, which became partly cloudy by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 15 degrees. The record low of -12 occurred back in 1965.

Tomorrow will be sunny 🌞, with a high of 17 degrees at 2pm. 14 degrees below normal. Maximum wind chill around -13 at 6am; Northwest wind 8 to 13 mph. A year ago, we had partly cloudy skies in the morning with sunny skies in the afternoon. The high last year was 32 degrees. The record high of 56 was set in 2013. 11 inches of snow fell back in 1966.❄ Typical average high is  is 32 degrees.

Looking ahead to Sunday, partly sunny, ☀with a high near 20. Light north wind. No wind, that’s almost beach weather. Typical average high for Sunday is 32 degrees. And in a little over a week on the following Saturday February 6th, the average high is 33 — a typical day will be above freezing or maybe more then that as the climate normal are old at this point and the 1991-2020 normal won’t be out until July 1st, when everybody says aw shit. 5 weeks from now the average high is forty.

🌹🌻🌼Only 50 days remain until the first day of calendar spring!🌹🌻🌼 When there is no hope, there is spring. Or so I tell myself. I just hate not having the windows open, or having the heat on. Honestly, I just don’t like being home. Normal winters I’d be working downtown, have the Empire State Plaza to walk in, and could go to the library after work. This panademic, while fun during the summer months, sucks during the winter.

Looking ahead, there are 7 weeks until Last Day of Winter 🏂 when the sun will be setting at 7:06 pm with dusk at 7:34 pm (Daylight Savings Time). On that day in 2020, we had rain and temperatures between 51 and 38 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 46 degrees. We hit a record high of 78 back in 2012.